Re: Simple commit mechanism for non-technical users

From: Chris Packham <judge.packham@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 19, 2009, 06:09 UTC
Message-ID: <a038bef50908182309i2c4a9cd8leac7d1136726247e@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <ef72456d0908180905u18593b63tdc850b8552db30b9@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 4:05 AM, D Sundstrom<sunds@peapod.net> wrote:

Show 21 quoted lines

> I use git to manage all project artifacts, including documentation,
> proposals, presentations, and so on.
>
> However, I have a hard time convincing non-technical staff to learn
> enough about git or to take the time to go through the effort of
> committing changes to a repository.  So the steady stream of email
> attachments with "Acme Specification v3" or "final final spemco
> proprosal" continues.
>
> I'd hoped there was a simple web interface that would allow a user to
> upload and commit a file to a repository, but I've had no luck finding
> one.  (I've used cgit for browsing, but it is read-only).
>
> Is anyone aware of a simple way I can have my non-technical users
> manage their documents against a git repository?  Ideally this would
> involve no installation of software on their machine (unless it were
> compelling, for example, the Finder plugin for SVN on the mac was a
> great tool for these users; or at least those on a mac...)
>
> -David
> --

Actually this is one situation that I'd say there are better solutions than git _ducks_.

The solution I've been trying to push people toward at my day job is using a wiki (we chose mediawiki but all the extra markup might still scare non-techies). Wiki's are version controlled (in a simple, centralized fashion) and allow editing from multiple authors and can be updated quickly. The only client software you need is a web browser. Plenty of open source projects use wikis for their living specifications.

You may also want to look around for other content management systems but the only one I've used kinda sucked. Not sure if there are any good open source ones (but then again I haven't really looked).

If you still want to use git as your version control system for these kinds of documents it shouldn't actually be too hard to implement and simple uploader to complement a viewer like cgit or gitweb. Unfortunately I don't know of any that exist but maybe someone else on the list does.